


your grace for my kingdom

by elbowsinsidethedoor



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 12:04:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11989437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elbowsinsidethedoor/pseuds/elbowsinsidethedoor
Summary: A quick fix-it for my heart after reading paenteom's beautiful but painful story, "your kingdom for my graces." Her (or his?) story is full of subtlety and a deep exploration of John's self doubt. It resonates with John's self-loathing, believing he's essentially violated Harold by touching him intimately while he's drugged. I've chosen to believe that John judges himself much more harshly than Harold ever would. Harold's desire, though silently expressed, is evident to me in paenteom's story and in this follow-up, from Harold's POV, I've tried to give voice to it.





	your grace for my kingdom

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [your kingdom for my graces](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11973870) by [paenteom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paenteom/pseuds/paenteom). 



Harold wakes up in stages with a feeling of comfort, of safety; reluctant to open his eyes. He’s had vivid dreams and he lingers in the hazy threshold between dreaming and waking, where he asks himself what is real.

John.

Is it true … did it happen? His body says yes. The couch and pillow under him, say yes. His eyes open slowly to a world that is changed. He’s in John’s loft and … I was a mess, he thinks … and John was sweeter than he had ever dared to imagine him. He wishes, with a flutter of trepidation, that he could feel the drug’s effects again. He wishes he could inhabit its sparkling haze of permission again; the cottony softness it gave his senses, the touchable surface it gave his skin. John.

Sitting up slowly on the couch, he finds his glasses and takes in the pre-dawn sky through the loft’s many windows. John said he liked living here. But he’d hesitated. To Harold, John seems more at home in the library itself.

The same could be said of me, he thinks. The library workroom is the place where he lives with John. Where they eat together, work together, commune at idle moments in the air of rarefied books. It’s where Harold can look up and see the handsome face. Where John reads like a hungry man at an endless, varied banquet; technical journals, massive non-fiction tomes and popular novels; sampling less the literary classics that are Harold’s favorite, even though he’s nudged them toward him.

The library is his own true home, more than the safe houses where he goes to sleep at night, where in privacy he contemplates seeing John the next day.

He needs to pee. He’s mildly pleased by his morning erection. This neglected part of his body is flush and sensitive with life.

Harold looks for signs of the night. The water glass is gone. A pity because he’s a little thirsty … but his belt is there, carefully coiled by John and put aside. He gazes at it, amazed, remembering John’s touch, fingertips sliding up his thigh. The first stirrings of sensation in the pit of his stomach as his friend performed the simple and very private task of unbuckling him, unbuttoning him. In the blessed cushiony embrace of the drug, Harold’s erstwhile fear that his aging body would disappoint, would not perform, was banished.

Enough indulging, he thinks. He really does need to get up and use the toilet. He makes his way there quietly, aware of John in the distance, on his bed; excited by knowing the world has changed around them.

His own reflection surprises him in the bathroom mirror. It’s been a long time since he’s viewed himself with the kind eye that having sex, that another person’s desire can bestow. It had happened to him with Grace, seeing a more handsome face in the mirror, because she did. Now Harold sees a person that John Reese has touched, not with pity, but with apparent desire. Dear god. The man had licked him from his hand.

How foolishly he’d behaved (did I really count the seconds when he left the room) and how gently John responded. So kind. Kindness. Harold can believe that kindness might spur John to indulge him, to pleasure him … but it wasn’t kindness he saw in his eyes when they locked on his. It was desire with a depth of yearning. His tongue cleaning every drop of semen from his hand. That … was not an act of kindness, it was passion. What miracle had imbued John with such a feeling for him?

Harold dried his face, his hands. Finger brushed his hair. It seemed to him that if he acted now, before full morning dawned, he would still be protected by the spell of the night. If he waited, if he left, it could be lost or worse — they might lose everything. Be unable to touch or to find their old footing. He can’t. He knows he can’t let go of this chance.

John is asleep on top of his bed in his clothes, not in it. The light is gray, morning is coming. John’s face is not peaceful and Harold is frightened but determined. Thinking the world has changed and testing reality are not the same. He’s also physically cautious. Startling a man with John’s reflexes can be a dangerous thing. He takes in the sight of the long body stretched out— legs that go on forever, powerful shoulders and torso.

Disbelief and doubt arise as he studies him. Does he really have the right to touch him, the nerve to offer himself, so flawed. The brazen inequity of it staggers him and he hesitates.

With a force of will, he remembers John’s longing gaze, the hand wet with sperm that he held to his mouth, licking as if he wanted to commit the taste of him to memory.

“John,” he whispers, from a careful distance. The eyes open. “John,” he says it again more gently, to soothe him, because there’s fear in the shadowed face. He takes a step closer though his heart is beating so hard now he can feel it in his throat. This is the bravery demanded of him, the courage he could never summon before.

His friend says nothing, but Harold sees worlds of thought reflected in the face he knows so well.

He takes a deep breath, acknowledging the complexity of John, the man he loves … who is surely as unmoored as he is himself. “May I?” he whispers, reaching out slowly to touch the hand that hasn’t moved on top of the blanket.

John doesn’t answer him but his hand closes warmly around Harold’s and some of the fear leaves his eyes, replaced by a soft look of wonder. Harold moves closer still. John’s expression humbles him as it frees him from doubt.

It’s not for me to judge myself unworthy, Harold thinks, in receiving the grace of John's love.


End file.
